


Honest Toil

by icarus_chained



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Conquest, Dark Character, Dystopia, Future Fic, Gen, Good Intentions, Hogwarts, Hufflepuff, Politics, Revolutionary Rhetoric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 19:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3907177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The manifesto of a rising Hufflepuff Dark Lord, in the aftermath of more than half a century of wizarding wars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honest Toil

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt: A Rising Dark Lord from Hufflepuff. It occurred to me that a Hufflepuff gone wrong would be the very definition of a well-intentioned extremist. "Honest work, just reward, that's the way to please the Lord", to quote Javert. So. Here we go?

You might belong in Hufflepuff  
Where they are just and loyal  
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true  
And unafraid of toil

 

A Hufflepuff does not shirk. That is first and foremost, the first law of our house. Hufflepuffs do not shrink from duty, nor balk at what we know must be accomplished. There are so few outside our colours who understand that. There are so few who know what it means.

A Hufflepuff is just in his or her actions. A Hufflepuff is loyal to his or her cause. A Hufflepuff is patient, is willing to toil without acknowledgement or relief until their job is done. A Hufflepuff is, first and foremost, ready to _work_. To do the jobs, to fix the messes, to come along behind and straighten out what more ambitious, foolhardy or high-minded forces have laid to ruin. The eternal janitors, Hufflepuff house. The last bastions of order.

And it is order that's needed now. More desperately than ever before. There have been so many messes lately. So many wars, so many tilts to the axis of our world. Dark Lords have risen every other decade, the throes of their struggles tearing chunks out of so many old institutions, leaving scars and holes and gaps in the foundations. The world is teetering, crumbling, law and order dependant on the whims of whoever is brave or bold or ambitious enough to enforce them now. Corruption creeps through everywhere, riding the coattails of conflict, riddling the survivors in the wake. The gyre widens. The centre cannot hold.

It needs _fixing_. It needs stopping. It needs a bastion, a bulwark, someone to stand ahead of it and force justice across it. What the world needs isn't another bold cause gathered under a shiny banner, mustered to face some brave evil and falling apart again in its absence. No. The world needs something different now. Something patient. Something _permanent_. Something that cannot be trusted to the whims of ambition or intellect or charismatic causes.

The world needs order. The world needs a master. A single voice, a single cause, to earn all the loyalty there is to be had. A single sword, to calmly mete out justice. A unity, where before there was only conflict. A control, where before there was only chaos. Oh yes. The world so desperately needs that. And it will have it. I promise you.

It will not come quickly, of course. There are too many causes, too many factions, all staggering along in the wake of broken wars, too used to conflict to let it go. It will take time to subvert them, time to sub _due_ them. It will take patience, and diligence, and long and thankless effort. It will take years of work, and far more care than those more hasty Dark Lords ever showed. That's the folly of ambition and reckless courage, I suppose. Instant gratification, intellectual satisfaction, those are the traps they fall into. They don't care for work. They don't care to be patient. They don't care to make it better as they go.

They are afraid of toil. And that, of all things, is something a Hufflepuff will never be.

The world will change from this point out. Mark my words. The world _needs_ changing. There's work to be done, and we will do it. Chaos will be stamped out. Resistance will be curtailed. The sword of justice will be swift and sure. We have been too damaged to allow for anything else. We have been betrayed too many times. These messes, I think, have been left uncleaned for long enough.

Listen to us. We are patient. We are loyal. We are true. We will make for you a safer world. We will shatter those who threaten you. We will work without complaint and without cease. We will reshape the world from the foundation up, we will do it stone by stone, by hand and by sword and by magic, and when we are done, the world will be _clean_. For the first time in so very long, the world will be ordered, and will be safe.

We are Hufflepuff. There is work to be done. There is _always_ work to be done.

And I swear to you, this time, we will be the ones to do it.


End file.
